Could Your Haircut Trimmings Help Save The Planet?

It's always strange to look at those wet chunks of hair that fall to the floor as a stylist chops my hair--happy, because I've shed all those split ends and will have a fun new look, but oddly sad, too, because I'm leaving a part of myself behind. I'd never even considered the creepy thought of where these pieces of me end up--until I read this crazy news item today.

According to the Cape Cod Times, a local hair salon there donates its hair clippings to a nonprofit called Matter of Trust, which weaves them into mats that help soak up oil spills. According to the website, the average salon has a pound of clippings to discard each day. Of the 370,000 salons in the U.S., about 10,000 now donate their stray hair.

Where did anyone ever come up with such a random idea? And who? It was actually a hairstylist from Alabama, Phil McCrory, who began dreaming it up while watching TV coverage of the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. He knew how much oil hair could absorb from shampooing greasy scalps and eventually put two and two together, inventing the oil-gobbling hair mats (which, by the by, can also be used for fertilizing plants).